


Kodachrome

by kaixo (ballpoint)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen, Trophies, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 16:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9615566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballpoint/pseuds/kaixo
Summary: Post Europa win, Dele can’t help to reflect on the path that brought him here.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been asked by many a Spurs fan to write fic about them winning a trophy, any trophy! Y'all know who you are! This fic is Dele centric. 
> 
> S/o to my beta reader, calchambaes for keeping me honest. All mistakes are mine.

**Friends Arena: Sola, 07:00, May 24, 2017**

“ _Look at this, look! Gaze upon the winners for The Europa Trophy of 2016/17! The heroes to their club. Say it with us, it’s_ -”

Noise, noise. Nothing but noise. 

Fireworks and confetti exploded around everyone in a din. The world a blur, as Dele heard and felt arms and bodies around him, pressed against him. 

_Oh my God-_

_We did it-_

Sentences truncated by delighted screams as Hugo - of course it had to be Hugo- took the cup from the official and raised it above his head. 

_Dele, Dele, De-_

Dele turned in the direction of the voice, felt himself being grabbed into an embrace, “Delboy!” The form’s features wavy, but even distorted you could see the brilliance of its grin. 

Dele blinked, seeing a face that he knew as well as his own. Laugh lines stamped at the corner of the blue eyes, Eric’s face wreathed in smiles, sheened with sweat. “We did it! We did i-” Eric threw his head back and _screamed_. 

Dele felt himself being grabbed again and allowed himself to be pulled along. His surroundings flickering around him like snatches of pictures, instead of a full stream of moving images. 

“We did it!” Eric hopped up and down on the pitch like a bunny on speed, and Dele couldn’t help but do the same, their arms wrapped around each other, Eric’s laugh gusting against his face. 

“Yeah,” Dele nodded, wanting to say something else but the synapses of his brain frizzed, whited out. He felt Eric’s hands against his cheeks, aware of his face hurting because he was smiling so much, laughing so much. 

“I-” 

“Yeah,” Eric nodded, his eyes now round and glassy, as the shock of it hit home. “Yeah! YEAAHH!” He tore off, screaming towards Toby and Jan, launching into his fellow defenders’ embrace screaming, “ _O meu Déus!_

All round him on the field, the images kept coming, widening his world. Kevin and Sonny in a warm embrace, rocking to and fro on the sidelines. Vincent sitting in the middle of the field, gobsmacked, being helped to his feet by Danny, while Walks and Tripps high-fived each other before breaking into one of their more elaborate handshakes before falling into each other’s embrace. 

Jan planting a kiss on Mousa’s temple, their fists punching the air like superheroes. 

In the stands, the Tottenham faithful now screaming and hugging each other. A hush at their part of the stadium, before the penny dropped. Their cheers going up, filling the air in a way that only fans in a stadium could. Nervous longing and energy channelled into strengthening triumphant desire unfurling into the night air.

 _Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur_.

Oversized Tottenham banners billowed in the wind like sails, hands on the shaft waving them to and fro. The navy blue silhouette of the cockerel standing on the ball against the sea of white. Other supporters hugged and rocked each other, children and adults waving to some unseen cameras. 

A lot of supporters’ faces streaked with tears, their lips trembling. 

Dele felt his eyes burn, his heart ache, but a _good ache_ ; where joy bubbled, sparkled and frothed in the chest, behind his ribcage, his body thrumming with the win. 

Before he could move again, Eric streaked over to him, his hair sun bright under the lights, the joy on Eric’s face making him _glow_.

“I knew we could,” Eric’s voice wavered, almost teary. Eric was never one to shy away from emotion, Dele knew. So he wasn’t surprised when Eric knuckled a tear away and opened his arms for Eric to shuffle into. 

Surprised though, when Eric got into his face. 

Felt himself being swept off his feet like a Disney heroine, spun around Eric’s cheek pressed against his. The air still trembling with the roar of the crowd, the pop of confetti as it fell around them, streamers of white and navy and silver everywhere. 

“We did iiiittt!” Eric sprinted away, grabbing at a smiling Victor, spinning him around on the field, Victor's laugh punctuating the air. 

Found himself back on his feet again, his stomach still a swoop of emotions as Eric came tearing back, grabbed his hands, and tugged. “Come, come, we have to ---” Eric’s face flushed, his eyes flashing as he pointed towards Pochettino, screaming at everyone else to come together. 

They all did, hands on Pochettino as they lifted him off his feet, all hands holding him secure, and it was nothing to push at their manager’s body, sending him airborne. All to a player, they knew the song the supporters sang for the gaffer, and Eric lead them into the chorus. 

_Oh oh-oh, he’s magic, you know/ Mauricio Pochettino!!_

The supporters picked up the threads of the song, joined in. The song taking on layers with each repeat. 

Harry and Winksy shouted and sang the loudest. 

After a minute. Or an hour, or three - time stretched and shrank after a trophy win, it seemed. Hugo gestured everyone together as they walked across the pitch towards the part of the stadium where the crowd sang and cried. The players clapped the crowd, the crowd clapped back. Harry’s eyes glassy with unshed tears under the lights, Winksy’s hands against his mouth, his eyes wide like he still couldn’t believe it. 

Flares and fire everywhere on the field, the world going up in blue and white plumes of smoke. 

Eyes tearing from the smoke and everything else, Dele couldn’t stop beaming.

***

**Hotel Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, May 25, 2017, 03:00 am**

The trophy gleamed dully in the dim light of the hotel lobby, standing to attention on the heavy marble topped table. By this time in the morning, everyone else had stumbled into their beds, crashing from their depletion of adrenaline, nerves and the solid realisation of a win. 

Five hours later, and Dele still couldn’t believe it. 

Eric’s words back in January a warning, a taunt and a prophecy. 

_“If in five years’ time we hadn’t won a trophy with this squad, everyone would be disappointed. Football is about winning trophies.”_ his words hit the back pages of the daily tabloids in an oversized black font. 

It was one thing to dare to say this amongst themselves, considering the disappointment at the end of last season (St Totteringham’s Day), the disaster of Euro 2016, and the failure of Champions League amongst most of the team. 

That being said, they had still believed; murmured their intentions amongst themselves, like prayers. Each draw, each win, each inching a place up the League Table, on the other side of the 2016/17 season, another bead to add to their string of litanies. Their confidence under Pochettino moving from brittle to supple; from thought and murmurings to open conversation. 

To say it into a reporter's recorder ... to have it in print? That took it from yearning to challenge. 

Eric though, wasn’t finished firing shots across the bow. _“Dele is scoring a lot of goals which has put him in the headlines but I’m not sure if it’s the best form he’s shown. Last season there were times when he was fantastic as well but he can do better as well. I’m sure he can.”_

Dele hadn’t responded to the call out in the press, he didn’t need to.

***

_Ohhh! Ooooh! Oooh, what an absolute beauty! A sublime header by Dele Alli in the seventy-fifth minute of this game! Where did he find the space?! Will Spurs hold out, or will they let their opponents back in? If not, and this stays the way it’s going... it might happen. Pochettino’s Spurs are on the brink of victory, of tasting their first trophy!”_

_"Alderweireld smothers out the danger in that coolly elegant way of his."_

_”This young man is a sensation. Bought from MK Dons for five million pounds, and has repaid that fee over and over. His form has helped Spurs come this far, and how. If Spurs win this tonight, it will be their first European cup since 1984 -”_

_“Another brilliant save by Hugo Lloris!”_

_“Harry KANE! The ball bullets past the goalie into the back of the net. A cracking assist by Heung Min Son!” ___

___“No, Trippier has let one in! It’s now one - two! With ten minutes to go before stoppage time!”_ _ _

___”Do you think they can do it, Darren?”_ _ _

___“To quote Sir Alex Ferguson,It’s squeaky bum time.”_ _ _

___“The referee has blown his whistle. Oh my word, Pochettino and his tiros have done it! They’ve done it! Look at Pochettino on the touchline! Normally he’s a restrained presence on the sideline, but not today! He’s thrown himself into the substitutes! The joy, infectious! The belief, self-evident!”_ _ _

___Tottenham Hotspur! Champions!_ _ _

____

***

Rocking back on his heels, unable to stop the bubbles of happiness that exploded into him doing another grin, or a soft shuffle, Dele closed the distance between him and the trophy.

His fingers now sliding across the hammered surface like braille. Dele had never been one for schooling, only doing enough in his compulsory exams to get the required amount of GCSEs, but even he had studied the history entwined with the cup. 

Back when English teams had the run of European honours, with clubs like Nottingham Forest and Manchester and Liverpool in the past. With Chelsea in recent years. The cup that announced the arrival of the coaching powerhouses of Jose Mourinho from Porto and Diego Simeone at Atlético de Madrid. 

Now, Tottenham Hotspur added to the long history of the cup. The victory all the sweeter by the sacrifices for this end game. 

Even leaving family behind.

***

“That’s a bit wank,” Harry Hickford declared, stabbing the tines of his fork into his scrambled eggs. Sunday morning, two weeks ago, the late spring sun streaming through the windows in the kitchen.

“It’s -” Dele started, spreading creamed cheese on a toasted bagel. 

It had been a rare Sunday where they didn’t have a game due to midweek European commitments and Pochettino had given everyone the day off. Considering they were approaching the business end of the season, with D-day two weeks from now, Pochettino had been generous, and Dele decided to spend the morning with his family.

The kitchen in this house designed to be open plan, with enough space for a dining room table and chairs seating four. The cupboards and fridge almost recessed into the walls, giving the feeling of so much space, you could play a five a side match in the kitchen if you wanted. Have a futsal game on the sheen of the hardwood floors. The windows not yet opened, the blinds drawn, letting the light in, framing the bright blooms of the gardens outside. 

Unfortunately, the view now wasted on Harry, head halfway down, his blonde hair falling across his features like a curtain. Ruby Mae, seated cross-legged on the dining room chair, elbows on the table, phone in hand. Her brunch of chicken salad ignored, as she thumbed at the screen of her phone. To ward the slight chill of the room away, she’d bundled up the softest hoodie the colour of clotted cream, and paired it with knit leggings the colour of eggplant. 

Ruby, with the instinct of someone who made a living out of being watched, glanced up from her phone, rested her hand on her chin and flashed him a warm smile. Her hair in a blunt cut just below her shoulders, the ash blonde highlights making her complexion warm and her features pop. 

_“It’s a lob,” she explained, when she’d first had it done, fluffing it into texture with both of her hands. At his obviously blank expression, she just laughed at him. “I like it,” Ruby continued to preen, looking at her reflection in the Topshop display window on Oxford Street. “And if I don’t?” he’d asked jokingly because Ruby would always be attractive. An eyebrow winged up at his question, Ruby's stare cool under her lashes, her voice even with confidence. “As long as I do, I don’t care.”_

“It’s fine,” Ruby started, putting her smartphone down beside her glass of sparkling water and lime, her hand reaching for his, she threading their fingers together, hands dewy and cool from holding her drinking glass. 

“Don’t listen to Harry, we understand. It sounds like a superstition, and superstitions are silly but-” Ruby narrowed her eyes at Harry. “It’s the same reason why Harry steps on the field with his right foot on the pitch at all times.”

“I do want you all there, but-” Dele’s voice trailed off, as he fumbled for the best way to say this. 

After the disappointment of the Euros, and Champions League, it had been hard. He wasn’t like Eric, who stormed and sulked with the loss until he got it out of his system before moving on. Nor was he like H, who could square it away almost immediately and chalk it to experience, using it to stoke the fires of a new challenge. 

Dele always had an idea of how he reacted to professional disappointments in the back of his mind as he matured as a player. However, the back to back blows over the past ten months really brought his preferred method of coming to terms with results home. 

He quickly came around to realising in the space of a hard six months of being kicked in the teeth, he fell somewhere in between Eric’s sulks and H’s quick brush off his shoulders. 

St Totteringham’s Day. Euro 2016. Champions League damp squib at Wembley. 

After Champions League, and the disappointment of parachuting into Europa League, Dele now realised he was someone who needed space for the hurt to bloom, and settle. Eventually, when the intensity of such feelings passed, he would think about comfort and take it on his own terms. Be it a phone call, or an embrace. 

“I think the gaffer is right,” he said at last. 

Pochettino had floated the idea at the team meeting, and everyone had taken it on board. 

_“We’re going to finish our job,” Pochettino threw out there with the steely force of an edict. Arms folded across his chest, his eyes flinty. For all his warmth, Pochettino could be a hard man in his beliefs when it counted, and that day, it counted._

_“No families, no distractions. You don’t bring women and children to battle,” his eyes scanning his players’ faces, looking for those who didn’t believe, so that they could be dropped sharpish. “It’s only forty-eight hours to suffer before the glory. We can give each other that, we will ask each other for that.”_

“Well,” Ruby slid her fingers from his, her voice yanking him from his thoughts into the brightly lit kitchen. The rose gold of her delicate hoop bracelet winking in the late spring sunshine as she picked up her fork. 

“Stockholm isn’t so far away. If you want, we can meet there, have a mini hols?”

“No.” Dele shook his head, speaking around his bites of bagel with salmon and creamed cheese. “We’re coming straight back the morning after the match. It’s not the Euros or a home match or anything like that, we’re not staying. It’s something we need to do.”

Also, after the last game of the season with them going down to Newcastle at one goal to five and everyone flying off from their holidays before Pochettino had his say; Pochettino made sure he cordoned off two days after the season was over and before they broke up. 

Another reason for the demands, Dele thought. 

Ruby lifted an eyebrow, her chin resting on her fist, looking at him for a short while. After a minute, she nodded to herself as if he’d answered a question.

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Right,” she smiled at him then, her eyes soft with affection. Her phone rang, and she straightened, her manner brisk as she read the name on the screen. “Oh, it’s my agent, sorry,” she explained apologetically before hopping to her feet off her chair, answering her phone with a breathless, “Hey.” 

Ruby excused herself from the table, loping across the kitchen to the living room. 

Dele waved her off because he understood. 

“So,” this was Harry, dabbing at the egg yolk on his plate with a bit of toast. “Do you think you can win this thing?”

“Yeah,” the answer reflexive, because Pochettino wouldn’t have them believing any other way. “We will.”

***

Back in the hotel lobby, the rest of the hotel now asleep. The lighting a soft glow throughout the parlour.

“Congratulations,” the concierge greeted with a pleasant smile. Her name printed on the badge of her uniform in neat letters: EDDA. 

A spark of surprise in his chest before it gave away to a glow of pleasure. Dele grinned, knowing that it would never get old. This feeling of... _achievement_ , the title of Europa winner 2016/2017 after his name. 

“Thanks,” he just couldn’t stop grinning. 

Dele took out his phone, saw the time, and decided not to call because the hour was too late. Saw the green icon of Whatsapp messages, and the microphone icons from all his nearest and dearest. He didn't want to listen to them, not yet. Instead, he sent messages to his various Whatsapp groups, with photos of the trophy, a subdued glow in the soft light of the lobby. 

Then he switched his phone on silent. He didn’t really want to speak to anyone. He wanted to just... take stock for a minute. 

Restless, Dele walked from the lobby, through the sitting room, out of the hotel, found himself by the harbour in front of the hotel. The water an eerie, glowing blue in the middle of the night. The night still warm and pleasant, but an odd sort of Twilight, because it wasn’t summer time in Scandinavia as yet, but it was coming with days that stretched on for months. 

Feeling jittery, with energy still unspent, Dele shucked off his shoes and socks, rolled up his spurs joggers to his knees. Lowered himself to the edge of the harbour and let his feet swing 

Looked out to the open water, but not really, reflecting on the path that brought him here.

***

**MK Dons academy: 2012**

The sharp burst of a whistle stopped all action, causing everyone to look up, save Dele.

“ _Sin bin. Now._.”

Dele dragged his foot across the ball, loping towards the centre of the field, only to catch his coach’s eye. 

“Me?” Dele’s tones indignant as he splayed his fingers across his chest, only for the coach to point to the ‘sin bin’ which was just a bench at the edge of the field, really. 

“Don’t let me ask you again, sunshine.”

With a dramatic sigh, Dele retreated to the bench, sat down. 

Only for Mr Jones to raise a bushy eyebrow. “Is there a problem, Dele?”

“No, sir,” Dele replied as meekly as anything. He’d gotten caught out with his temper. Again. 

“Two minutes.” 

Dele knew the drill and watched the other boys as they practised drills on the green under the leaden sky. Impatient, he squirmed on the bench, watching the lads before him, and in his mind, he kicked at every ball.

***

**Late 2014**

“Dele-”

“I don’t want to go, not just yet,” Dele rubbed at his eyebrow with the tips of his fingers. It was Friday evening, thank God, with school being out for the weekend.

The MK Dons had a game tomorrow against Millwall, and they’d spent the afternoon doing a bit of shape work on and off the ball. 

Dele liked all things regarding football, but shape work might have been the best. 

Karl dismissed everyone early, asking Dele for a word. 

“I-” Dele began, his backpack hanging off his shoulder. He’d been walking towards the car park alongside Patrick because Patrick promised him a ride home. Dele had yet to get his licence because he kept failing the road test, which was rubbish.

“Erm...” he started, rubbing the nape of his neck. 

“No worries, mate,” Patrick cut in. “I’ll come back and pick you up if you wish?”

“Y’sure?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Patrick ran his fingers through his sandy coloured hair, pulling it away from his forehead. “Just give me a call when you’re through.” He nodded respectfully towards Karl. “Gaffer.”

“Patrick.”

Fast forward and Dele found himself in Karl’s office. 

Karl Robinson had been his first team coach for two years, as he had found himself being promoted out of the academy to first team with dizzying speed. 

After two years with Karl, and MK Dons, his office felt like home. 

As small as a half bath, it had enough space for a desk, two chairs (one on either side of the desk), a filing cabinet that had seen better days, and paper and kit everywhere. Through the office window, Dele saw the training field, and beyond the mist, the borough of Milton Keynes in the distance. 

The outside wasn’t important, as much as what was contained within this room.

Behind Karl, a whiteboard with the outline of a football pitch, and scribbles of players and their positions. Dele’s heart always bounced when he saw his initials on any sort of team sheet: D.A. He hadn’t called himself by his full name for years now. 

Karl sat facing him across the desk, rubbing his hands along his bearded chin, his eyes in a perpetual squint as if always looking at the horizon into the blinding glare of the sun. Extreme to the point where it had taken Dele a long time to realise his gaffer had blue eyes.

“I’ll have to be blunt with you, Dele,” Karl started in the lilting Northern tones that Dele knew well. Karl originally hailed from Liverpool, but his vowels were not as tightly rolled as say the high profiled Scousers like Jamie Carragher and Steven Gerrard, because he’d lived down South for a long time. 

“Offers have been coming in for you from various clubs. Newcastle and Liverpool being two of ‘em, yeah.” 

Dele shrugged his shoulders. After MK Dons and their battering of Manchester United, yeah, he’d raised his profile, that was a given. Karl and himself had talked about him moving on eventually, but -

“I’m good here.”

“For now,” Karl’s eyes were kind, “but soon...”

Dele swallowed, forced a lump back in his throat as he perched on the edge of his chair, body coiled and on edge as if he were on tenterhooks. “Y-you,” he rubbed at his nose. “You want me to leave?”

“For the sake of your growth, lad, yes.” the expression on Karl’s face now tinged with sorrow. “I’m not pushing you out, I don’t want to, but you can't stay. I want you to start thinking about what your next step is going to be.”

***

“That’s brilliant, isn’t it?”

Patrick raised his voice, fussing around in the kitchen as Dele sat at the table, twiddling with his fork, waiting for his meal. 

They were by Patrick’s flat, one of those flats where the kitchen and the dining room were one room. Dele had a hankering for fish and chips, from the chippie, but Patrick being Patrick _offered_ to cook something else more suitable. 

“Maple soy glazed salmon,” Patrick presented the dish with the flair of a Maitre’d, with a towel folded over his outstretched arm, as he sketched a bow. “With wild rice and sauerkraut.”

It tasted delicious, but Patrick was that kind of lad. 

The annoying kind who seemed to be good enough at _everything_ he did. 

Cooked like a sous chef, spoke loads of languages, played enough instruments to be his own band. A swot too, who turned down a scholarship to Harvard to pursue football. 

You’d think that he’d be a bit wet- given that he was from the Chelsea academy on loan to MK Dons- but on top of all that, Patrick was sound. 

“This is the one, still,” Dele tapped the plate with the tines of his fork for emphasis. “I’m-”

“Changing the subject,” Patrick cut in, as he pulled his own plate towards him. “You’re a talent, and if a big club comes for you, why not?”

“Because -”

“You don’t want to go on loan, probably,” Patrick cut in, his accent sounding more London than Midlands. He took on the prickly subject without Dele having to because he was on loan to MK Dons from Chelsea. Dele sent him a grateful smile, for not making things awkward. 

“I like it here.”

“What does your agent say? They aren’t giving you the hard sell to move on, are they?”

“No.”

“That’s alright then.” Patrick speared his salmon with his fork, the soft flesh giving way under the crackle of the thin skin. “You’ll move when you’re ready. You’re a talent, Dele, and on top of that, you’re canny. You’ll be fine.”

***

“N- yeowch!”

“Sorry,” Sam raised her eyes from his ankle. The game had been more physical than usual, the kicks more pointed. The flesh of Dele’s foot pitted with stud marks. 

The rest of the lads milling around in various states of undress in the background. Sam, their medical personnel who’d been around a dressing room or two didn’t bat an eyelash as she inspected his foot. Her gloved fingers on his foot firm but gentle enough not to make the pain worse. 

Dele breathed through his mouth, willing the racing of his heart to slow down. 

“It’s not broken, a bit sprained,” Sam’s verdict crisp and to the point. “You know what to do, yes?”

Rest, ice, compression, elevation. 

“Yeah,” Dele tried to smile, but it was hard, knowing that his foot would be sore in the morning. Tomorrow was Thursday, and he’d hope that the swelling would have gone down enough to fit into his shoes for the Saturday match. 

“You have my number. If it hurts too much when you-” and Dele didn’t hear the rest, not over the fretful storm of his thoughts, the evil buzz of angry bees.

***

Forty minutes later, everyone else filed out, leaving Dele alone, his injured foot on a little stool in front of him.

Patrick and Harry both had taken ill and stayed away from the match which suited Dele just fine, because he had the chance to sit alone in the dressing room. 

Taking in the low benches, the hooks where the coats and civies were hung. His jacket the lone garment on the row of hangers. The air rich with the scent of sweat and soap. Leaning back against the wall, he covered his mouth, looked at his swollen foot. 

“Dele, are you still here?” Karl’s voice rang with surprise. “I thought you’d have been getting- is your foot okay?”

“Yeah,” Dele nodded, still staring at his foot. His ankle looking more like a cankle, the way how the swelling disfigured it. “Just sprained, but I thought-” he started, his voice becoming hoarse with emotion. He shook his head, still staring ahead. Feeling, not seeing as Karl sat beside him, his bulk making him not so graceful. 

The fabric of Karl’s dress pants brushed against Dele’s knee as he made himself comfortable. Dele shifted his butt against the hard surface of the bench, blindly staring at the wall ahead. 

“They were a bit rough on you out there.”

“I thought-” Dele’s voice trailed off, as he remembered being on the field. His feet scything from under him, Dele cried out when caught on the business end of a tackle. His breath stolen from his lungs as his body slammed against the coarse pitch. Dele scrambled to his feet, his ankle folding under him. 

The pain a sharp bloom that obliterated everything else.

Karl on the touchline, hands cupped around his mouth, yelling a question. Dele waved him off, played through the sharp throb of pain, focusing on the ball.

His composure shattered at the stomp on his foot halfway through the second half. 

Dele again held up his hand to placate Karl, but Karl wasn’t having it. Mouth pulled into a pout and cheeks reddening, Karl subbed him off. 

As soon as Dele hobbled off the field and onto the touch line, horror swiped through him with sharp claws, his mind consumed with the fear and fever of _suppose..._

“I thought I’d be hurt,” Dele’s voice trembled with his alarm. His words echoed in the empty dressing room. “That I’d be hurt before... Before.”

He didn’t need to say it as Karl reached over and patted his thigh. “You’re ready now, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Dele,” Karl’s fingers squeezed his knee, causing Dele to lift his head and into his coach’s eyes. Karl as always, honest and forthright. His chubby face would be normally wreathed in smiles, his light eyes twinkling. However, with Dele’s comment, his features were now as sober as a mortician’s. 

“Once we go to the board and tell them, you can’t turn back, nor-” at this he tried to smile, but it faltered at the corners. “You really shouldn’t. I’m willing to let you go, gladly. You can do it, you know that, yeah?”

Dele nodded. 

“But,” Karl went on. “We have to be strategic. It makes no sense you rock up to a club and don’t play, or get farmed out on loan. Come on, get yourself showered and changed. I’ll take you home.”

Dele looked around the dressing room again. Feeling Karl’s hand falling from his knee. A pat on his shoulder as Karl left him alone. 

“But I’m home,” Dele wailed softly, looking around the changing room again. His heart sank as realisation set in. 

He couldn’t stay.

***

**Now: 2017**

“A penny for your thoughts, Del boy.”

Eric’s voice tugged him from his thoughts. Dele blinked the memories away, focused on here. Eric now sat beside him, having the same idea he had. Short sleeves, Spurs shorts (Eric preferred shorts to long track bottoms, no matter how cold), and clean bare feet dangling off the edge. 

“With the cost of living as it is?” Dele narrowed his eyes, as he glanced at Eric. “I think you’d need AMEX.”

“ _Oooerr_ ” Eric teased, the English jeer sounding odd from his mouth. 

It wasn’t as if Eric didn’t speak English. He did so, as fluent as anything, but his time spent away from England made him stand out in subtle ways. Like, _Oooerr_ , without the adjoining, _get you_ that was part mockery, part affection. _Ooerr_ by itself sounded odd. 

Dele knew he didn’t need to hear the _get you_ to know that Eric meant it in the gentle art of the piss take. 

“Why are you up? I thought you’d be sleeping.”

“I slept for a bit,” Eric admitted, “then I woke up to this really wicked dream that we were the Champions,” he continued, his smile sly. “ I wanted to tell you about it but you weren’t in your bed.”

“Do you miss it?” Dele asked, staring out at the harbour, his eyes burning. Not from the salt air. “Not Portugal, I mean, but your first academy.”

“At times,” Eric answered after a few moments, his tone echoing Dele’s in terms of the quiet intensity. “That’s where you grow up, loving football, yeah? The kitman, your first gaffer.”

Dele nodded, rubbing at his nose, still looking out, the lights on the distant islands giving their surroundings a soft glow. 

“Yeah, did you-?” he paused, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

“What’s wrong, Del?”

“Nothing.”

“We won a trophy and you have a face like a smacked arse, that’s not ‘nothing’.”

Dele lifted his head, looked at Eric in the twilight. It was nearer to dawn than midnight, and the others would be waking up soon. Or if not the others, Pochettino at least.

“I can’t go back.”

“Pffft, you can and you do. You go back to MK Dons every chance you get.”

Dele shrugged off his shirt, kicked off his bottoms before jumping into the harbour, feeling edgy and fretful. Normally, these things didn’t get to him, they just didn’t. He sat down, focused, made a decision and got on with it. Like the time he decided to dock his surname from the back of his team shirt at the start of this season, because it was the right decision for him. 

Sinking below the surface of the water, the sounds and sights muffled. Heard the bubbles and froth and floated up, shaking the water out of his eyes, spitting it out of his mouth. 

He wasn’t surprised to see Eric swimming towards him, doing a keen breaststroke. Eric was a strong, fast swimmer at normal times, but now, hastened by the fact that Dele swam a distance from him, now treading water in the far side of the harbour. 

“What did I say?” 

“Eric-”

“ _Dele_.”

“Nothing, seriously. It’s that old cliché, yeah? It’s not you, it’s me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Dele half laughed, their surroundings slumberous save for the muffled splash of water. “I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t think I could explain it to you.”

“Can you try, at least?”

“Don’t you have a trophy to celebrate, mate?” Dele kicked off, doing a smooth breaststroke, swimming slowly and aimlessly because he was in no hurry. 

Eric nipped around, leaving the splash and churn of water in his wake, half way blocking Dele. 

“I celebrated last night, and I can celebrate later,” Eric’s voice now mulish, and Dele knew that tone well. Before he could fob Eric off, Eric’s next words stopped him. 

“You can’t expect me to celebrate now when you’re like this?”

Eric’s fingers now on his cheek, his eyes sombre in the brightening morning. 

Dele held up a hand, the tips of his fingers prune-like from soaking in the water. He couldn’t explain everything to Eric, but he could at least _try_ right? 

“Let’s get out of here then,” Dele peered at their hotel, trying to see if the staff were up. “If we’re lucky, we might catch the first breakfast shift.”

Eric rolled his eyes skyward, his hand dropping from Dele’s cheek into the water with a _plop_. “Of course,” he said.

***

**36 hours before the final**

Stepping off their coach parked in the driveway of their hotel, Dele dragged the visor of his cap over his face. His wheeled suitcase _whirring_ on the hard, walking from the ferry to the entrance of their hotel where a thicket of supporters stood. 

The group of supporters ranged from old white haired men to toddlers, and ages in between. All to a man clad in Spurs’ shirts with different colours, designs and sponsors through the years, waving banners, flags and shirts. 

The air coloured with excited chatter and laughter by the supporters. 

“Wow,” he murmured, glancing at the sky, trying to gauge the time and giving up. 

Northern Europe in the late spring and summer months showed no true indicator of time, due to its long days and short nights. It could have been five o'clock or nearer to ten o’clock - the latter time being more accurate given their last game finished at five and they were on the plane by six pm. 

Or, if you went by the twenty-four hour clock, 22:00 hours. 

“We do have a bit of a following here,” Winksy explained, his voice low and deep to the left of Dele’s shoulder. “Not as big as Liverpool,” he finished, grin already in place as he waved at the supporters. “But even more passionate and better. That being said,” Winksy glanced at his watch, and then at the crowd, the skin around his eyes crinkling in amusement as they loped nearer to the thicket of fans now smiling and giggling, but being generally quiet, mindful of the other hotel guests.“It’s pretty late, considering. About half ten their time.”

It might have been, but Dele knew the drill. That’s why Pochettino made the club arrange for them to fly out within ninety minutes of their last fixture of the season. 

As much as fatigue tugged at him, because it had been a long day, Dele smiled at seeing a mixed race child wearing a Spurs shirt. He might have been five, or a small six. He bounced on his tippy toes and waved in Dele’s direction, face flushed with excitement. His hair a blonde afro surrounded his face like a dandelion, waving from side to side as he jumped around. 

Swallowing his fatigue, Dele roused himself and made a beeline towards him. 

“Dele! Dele!” the boy yelled in the bright, high tones of children at that age. Aware that he now had Dele’s attention, he spun on his tiptoes, his back to Dele, thumbs pointing to the name printed on the back of his shirt. 

DELE. 

Getting to one knee, so he can be on eye level with his young admirer, Dele asked him his name. Half worried that he might not understand English- considering his age- but he did. 

“I am Nils,” he smiled showing a missing front tooth, his eyes a warm grey. “You-” and his face flushed puce. Overcome with shyness, the child turned away from Dele, and planted his face in the jean clad thigh of an adult female. 

“Tell him,” and the thigh must have belonged to his mother, because their features were carbon copies of each other, despite their differing complexions. Flaxen blonde hair streaming around her shoulders to her armpits, which matched her silvery blonde eyebrows and warm grey eyes. Nils’ forehead still against her thigh, shook his head _no_.

“Ah, Nils,” she bent down, hoisted the boy on her hip, laughing as Nils tucked his head against her shoulder. She murmured something in his ear in musical and bouncy Swedish. Nils squirmed and bounced in her arms, looking like a squirmy potato in a white shirt. 

“You are his favourite player,” she explained, an arm around her child, her English accented and fluent. “He watches you every week, no matter what happens.” 

Nils chirped something in Swedish and Dele didn’t understand. Nils’ Mum though, was gracious enough to translate. “He says, you look like him.”

Moved by the confession, Dele smiled, touching Nils’ shoulder. “I guess I’ve met my favourite fan.”

Smiling in appreciation, showing a glimpse of a snaggle tooth, she told Nils in Swedish, and Nils pulled away from his mother to look at Dele. 

After prompting from his mother in swift whispered Swedish, Nils grinned, shoving his hands in the blond curly afro of his hair, and pushing it back from his forehead, his face still flushed, but now from pleasure than embarrassment, his voice high and clear. “Thank you, Dele!”

“High five!” Dele held up his hand, palm out, Nils slapping his open palm. 

“Do you mind?” Nils’ mum asked, smartphone in hand. Dele let the handle of his suitcase go, steeled himself for an incoming Nils, all arms and legs and energy. Felt the warmth of Nils’ forehead against his cheek, smelt the faint scent of bath soap and _boy_ , squinting against the flash of the camera. 

Dele knew the drill, talking to Nils and standing still enough for a good few seconds for his mum to get as many pictures as he liked, his smile as bright as Nils’.

This wasn’t why he played football, but, Dele could freely admit as Nils babbled happily in his ear, his arms a stranglehold around his neck, things like this came a close second. 

“Can you-?” Dele asked, reaching for his phone in his pocket, and handing it to Nils’ mum.

“Sure.”

***

“Listen to you,” Eric scoffed, but it wasn’t unkind. Looking at the time, they realised it was too early for breakfast. Pochettino wasn’t a man who demanded many things, but the things he insisted upon he wouldn’t be moved, and meals together were one of them.

Eating together was something sacrosanct and both of them had too much respect for Pochettino’s regime to break the rule, so they grabbed bottles of water and drifted out on the hotel grounds, their phones in their pockets, their watches on their wrists.

“You got a fan,” Eric took a sip of water from his bottle as they walked across the hotel grounds. Not as expansive as some places they’d stayed at, because in their part of Sweden, a body of water was never too far away. The gentle slap of water against the hull of the boats that bobbed in the bay, the quiet of the morning periodically broken by the odd cackle of a seagull. “Nils, is it?” 

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Eric answered. Obviously curious, but patient enough to listen to what Dele had to say. If Dele knew what to say. It was one thing doing the media patter, because they were well trained. It was another to dredge up memories that still unsettled, but Eric was a friend, and friendship demanded certain things, like trusting them with a previously hidden detail of your life to see what they’d do with it, and hope you could live with the reaction. 

“I remember when I was younger, I used to watch F1. When it was on BBC at the time,” Dele answered indirectly. “I mean, not like I used to watch it _all_ the time,” Dele patted his pockets for candy, half surprised to find a pack of liquorice sticks. 

It wasn’t his favourite sweet, but needs must. He offered the pack to Eric, and Eric took one. 

“Oh yeah?” and that was Eric, patient when he had to be, probably wondering where this story was going. 

“Yeah, like, Lewis Hamilton? You know? Not that I thought that I’d be a motorsport driver or anything, but seeing him doing stuff like that, made me doing my thing a bit easier. You know, given his background and all.”

Eric chewed his liquorice slowly, his mouth moving and making shapes around the sticky candy. 

“I get i -” Eric’s voice thick and gooey sounding as he spoke around the sticky sweet in his mouth. “I think.” he swallowed, clapping a hand to his mouth to cover a loud burp. 

“ _Charming_.”

“Liquorice sweets before breakfast, not a good idea,” Eric pulled a face and rubbed at his chest with the heel of his hand. “But yeah, I get it, I think? You don’t really talk about your past much. Winksy told us that you were in a witness protection programme, once.”

“He _didn’t_.”

“Yeah, said something about no one actually wanting to live in Milton Keynes willingly? That your real name wasn’t even Dele Alli, but Aled Llewelyn Davies. He had me going for a minute.”

Dele laughed, promising himself that he’d prank Winksy later, especially for giving him a Welsh name. “Winksy is a knob. _Our_ knob, but a knob.” He sobered up when the gentle scolding of Eric’s comment hit home. 

“There’s nothing to talk about on that end, Dier.”

“But Nils-”

“Nils has a mum who bought him a shirt with my name on it, and was game enough to take him out of the house and waited a while just to see me. It’s-” and suddenly the label on the water bottle was the most absorbing thing, Dele’s eyes scanned the print, wondering how you pronounced the little circles and dots above the letters. 

“It’s not like your family, you know? With two parents and all your siblings growing up alongside you and you do things together and your parents backed you in whatever you wanted to do. It wasn’t like that for me.”

The cackle of the seagulls broke the silence of the morning, over the gentle lulling sounds of the water. Dele sighed audibly, “Sorry, that’s - I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It is what it is, right?”

“ _Bleurgh_ ” Dele tapped the bottom of his water bottle against his open palm. This is why he didn’t really get into things. You couldn’t fix the past, and with friends who had other distinctly different and comfortable childhoods, it threw up a fault line at turns. 

“It’s OK,” Eric offered with an easy shrug of his shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s your business, right?”

It was, but he’d known Eric for eighteen months now, and they’d shared wins and losses. The latter especially had drawn them closer. Eric had asked about his childhood before, and quickly learnt not to pry. 

“I’m not a lad who uh- "Dele began, stopped. "What’s the word, when you look back, take stock of things?”

“Reflect, you mean?”

“Yeah that. It’s something I only learnt to do with football, I guess. Like, you have your coaches asking you what you _did_ and why you did that. Or Miguel’s clips of what we’ve done in the matches. I mean, I get it for football, when Poch bangs on about _margins_ or summat, but--”

Dele’s voice trailed off, his teeth worrying his lower lip as he stopped. Tried again. 

“Growing up, all I ever wanted to do was to play football, and fortunately, I was good at it. It didn’t really care if I was mixed race, or my mum was unable to manage. It didn’t care if I were from a -” he paused, doing air quotes with his pointer and middle finger “ _‘troubled childhood’_. You just got on with it, you know? Football didn’t care, but people did.”

Agitated, because the memories still sat uncomfortably with him, Dele rubbed at his face. 

“Being a mixed race kid in England is like- it’s ridiculous. There are certain things that my mum growing up couldn’t say to me because she just didn’t _understand_. When sober, anyway. Probably if I had a dad who’d stuck around, it might have helped. But it didn’t happen, and it is what it is.” 

That wasn’t even the half of it, really, and from the look Eric gave him, he knew that too. But that was enough of a story to be going on with. Until he felt strong enough to piece together things again. 

 

“I’m not arrogant enough to think that I did everything on my own, I was lucky. I had talent, good coaches who looked out for me, especially Karl and now Pochettino. Lucked out with some amazing mates who made everything better, became _family_. But...”

“But you worked hard for it though?” Dele felt Eric’s arm around his shoulders, as they walked to the furthest part of the hotel grounds, stopped along the railing looking out to where the sea met sky. Some pleasure boats bobbed in a nearby harbour, and the odd seagull flew by. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Dele’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Seeing Nils and his mum... I’d only hope that he wouldn’t have to work so hard. I’m glad that his mum went out of her way to let him meet someone he admired who looks not necessarily like her, but like -”

“Him.”

Eyes burning, Dele could only nod. 

He told himself that the grit in his eyes came from the late night celebrations and the fact that he had no sleep for the past thirty-six hours. Using his thumb and forefinger, he wiped at his eyes, hating himself for even throwing a wobbly over what this was. 

This is why he never looked back, always forward because no good came from glancing at the rearview mirror of your life. 

“Yeah,” he released a shaky breath. Feeling unsteady enough not to shrug off as Eric drew him into a hug, Dele’s cheek resting against Eric’s shoulder as he willed the shivery, achy feeling to pass. 

The world stirring to life now, people’s steps on the walk, the ambient noise levels of humanity rising with their chatter and activity. 

“I don’t know if you know,” Eric drawled, his breath warm against Dele’s ear, “but last night, we won a trophy.”

The laughter tripped from Dele, caught him by surprise. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, the Europa trophy. Not big ears, but we’ll do that next year. We can’t just stop at one, not now.”

“Gotta get them all.”

Eric gave Dele one final squeeze before he stepped away, leaving Dele feeling robust and comforted. 

A moment later Dele startled as his phone buzzed in his pocket. 

Eric slapped a hand on his pocket as well, as their different ring tones sliced through the tranquil mood of the morning simultaneously. 

A message came through their Whatsapp, and it was Harry. His icon a picture of his baby girl in a Spurs onesie. 

Eyebrow raised, Eric pressed the ‘play’ button on the app, and Harry’s voice came through loud and clear. 

“Chaps, where _are_ you? Everyone is up for breakfast and-” Harry’s voice broken by cheers and whoops in the background. His teammates’ joy so infectious, it scrubbed away Dele’s lingering sadness. 

_Oh my gosh, it’s real!_ Winksy squealed in the background. 

_Let me, let me!_ That was Mousa, a guy who had an SO with kids, sounding like one himself. 

_Where are Dele and Eric?_ Christian asked in those thoughtful tones of his. _They should be here-_

“You need to come now!” Harry’s voice boomed. “I don’t know if you know but -”

“Last night, we won a trophy,” Dele and Eric chorused aloud, exchanging grins. The phone rang again, and Eric pressed the green call icon that flashed on his screen with Hugo’s name as caller id. He put the phone on speaker. 

“Where are _you_?” 

“We’re outside,” Eric answered for them both. “Eating liquorice and chasing it with water.”

“Hmmm...” Hugo’s voice trailed off, as if he were in deep thought. “We are waiting for you. Come now, please.”

Eric clicked off the phone, his eyes on Dele. Dele already knew the question before Eric opened his mouth to ask. 

“I’m safe, mate. Let’s go, I want to see it again, to see if it’s _real_ or -”

“Collective hysteria?”

“That would be gash,” Dele grinned, “but I wouldn’t care.”

“We’ll find out soon enough then.” Eric threw an arm around Dele’s shoulders, and Dele slipped an arm around his. Hanging off each other, they half walked, half ran to the hotel, to see if the Europa trophy looked the same in daylight. 

 

FIN

**Author's Note:**

>   * [ Europa League trophy a video about the making of the trophy and the rest of it. ](http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/video/highlights-matchday/videoid=2363914.html)
>   * The Europa final will be played in [ Friends Arena, Stockholm, Sweden](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Friends_Arena) on May the 24th, 2017 
>   * Eric Dier has gone on record saying [Spurs need to win trophies, and he's told Dele to get his finger out and step up, so to speak](http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/eric-dier-believes-tottenham-squad-9593786%20)
>   * Kodachrome: In the days before the Digital Camera, Kodak used to make Kodachrome, a type of film for analogue cameras that gave dazzling colour. The film was notoriously difficult and complicated to process (but still, beautiful). Due to rising costs and declining demand, it went out of production in 2009, iirc. [However, with analogue cameras coming back into vogue, there's been a clamour for Kodachrome. So it might be coming to an analogue camera near you!](https://fstoppers.com/film/kodachrome-might-make-comeback-and-you-could-help-161128%20)
>   * The hotel in this fic that[ I wish to stay at ](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/sweden/stockholm/hotels/hotel-skeppsholmen/)
> 



End file.
